Most Sunday nights I watch
the L Word on Showtime. And if I’m feeling like the television
equivalent of eating a Twinkie, I might tune in to Desperate Housewives.

Tonight, I went to church.

(Kim: There
is such an incredible contrast between L Word/Desp. Housewives
and church, especially when you, Joan, become the performer at church.)

I have been talking with
the staff at the resort all week. The two things that come up the most
are family and God. So how could I not go to church?

My cousin Rhena, who is getting
over a bad breakup and has come down to join us for a few days, doesn’t
understand. She was raised Orthodox and says she would never marry a
man who wasn’t Jewish.

I say, for myself, I don’t
care. I am more interested in whether or not someone cares about social
justice issues, has a capacity for both conversation and quiet, and
likes to read and laugh and dance.

When I tell her that I am
going to church, she asks if I am anti-Jewish. I tell her my going isn’t
about that. I am a guest in this country and, if church is so important
to these people, I want to respect them and to share more of their experience
by going.

It is a short walk, less
than a half a mile down a deserted road. I am met at the door by a white
man in a tie with a painting of a church on it who
asks me my name and introduces himself.

Besides me, the pastor, his
wife and daughter, there are six people there.

A Jamaican man named Brother
Fernando gets up on the pulpit and says, “There is a big party
at the Hungry Iguana tonight because they are celebrating someone’s
birthday. So we may not have many people. But we are celebrating Christ
so we are in a good place tonight.”

He gestures to me and says,
‘You are very welcome but no need to keep looking at the door
because there will be no more people tonight, this is it.”

Although the church is nondenominational
Christian, the pastor Daniel Shroy went to Bob Jones University in South
Carolina for five years so we use a Baptist hymnal. The melodies are
easy and clean. I enjoy singing with everyone.

We stand to sing such songs
as “We Will Glorify,” and “Victory in Jesus.”
After we sing, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” Brother
Fernando asks if I, tonight’s guest, will sing a solo.

(Kim: So many people (like
myself) would have wiggled out of it, though I’m not comfortable
at all singing unless I’m alone and drunk.)

Holy moly. This is a far
cry from karaoke.

I think of some of the music
with which I was raised, of all the years of Sunday school.

I briefly contemplate "Shalom
Havarim" and then decide that would make my presence more complicated
tonight. I am not interested in calling attention to myself. It isn’t
that I want to blend in. I just want to support and participate.

Somewhere from the recesses
of my memory, I recall, “Come in the Room,” a gospel song
that my brother learned when he was friendly with a minister who worked
at our high school as a printer.

I stand at my seat.

Brother Fernando, who I had
met on his bike as I hurried down the road asking directions, shakes
his head.

“No,” he says.
“Here, up here.”

I walk to the pulpit and
thank everyone for their hospitality. From somewhere, I do not know
where, I think to dedicate the song to my mother, who is struggling
with her eyesight.

The minister nods in sympathy.

I sing,

Come in the room
Come in the room
Come in the room
In the prayer room.
Jesus
Jesus
Jesus Christ will meet you.
The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit greet you
You find joy, unspeakable joy in the room
In the prayer room.